Re: Bug: diff --no-index with cachetextconv crashes

From: Paweł Dominiak <dominiak.pawel@gmail.com>
Date: Feb 26, 2024, 07:56 UTC
Message-ID: <CACeVQwRkoJejrWvym_BAZE-OWi+q3RZfyEpwAwA+0hGUBCeD=Q@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <20240226072248.GC780982@coredump.intra.peff.net>

> OK, I would say that this failing is semi-expected. :) The caching
> system works using "git notes", which are stored in refs in the
> repository. And since you are running "diff --no-index" outside of a
> repository, there is nowhere to put them.

I have not mentioned this specifically, but my goal is a general diff command, which internally uses text conversions, pager etc. as configured for git. It makes sense to cache the textconv results when used in a repository, but I don't think it should fail when not in one. I think the default behavior should be to silently skip caching in such situations but produce a diff otherwise.

> Of course any time we see a BUG something has gone wrong. What I think
> _should_ happen is that we should quietly disable the caching (which,
> after all, is just an optimization) and otherwise complete the command.

In my script I currently disable caching explicitly for all drivers:

keys=$(git config --name-only --get-regexp '^diff\.\w+\.cachetextconv$') config=(); for key in $keys; do config+=(-c "$key=false"); done

git "${config[@]}" diff --no-index --no-prefix "$@"

But it seems like something git should handle on its own, so that diff would accommodate use in different circumstances with the same config.

-Pawel